


nothing but dust on wind

by aiineslin



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiineslin/pseuds/aiineslin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever people said, Hermann thought that he had a perfectly reasonable, balanced childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing but dust on wind

Things a person should know about Hermann Gottlieb, aged three.

1\. His parents buy him blocks and blocks of brightly coloured Legos and he builds them all into teetering, brilliant towers of plastic knobby death. Hermann’s uncle once called the living room a trap for unsuspecting adults, and his wife can’t help but agree once she stubbed her feet one too many times on a jagged bit of Lego.

2\. Hermann’s father used to video him. There is footage of his mother calling him her solemn little boy. She squeezes his cheeks, and the child half-staggers, half-rolls away on the carpeted floor. She looks at the camera, and waggles her eyebrows. She tries to smile.

3\. He stays away from the bathroom, and his little face squinches into a terrible frown when his mother tries to change his diapers. He screams a lot, and cries very loudly whenever this happens, and these are the only moments when his pale little face flushes mottled red.

 

 

*******

Things a person should know about Hermann Gottlieb, aged five.

1\. It is on a Wednesday when he hands his father a piece of lined paper. There are carefully printed numbers on it, bold and black and deeply indented on the thin paper with the effort of making it neat. “So this is where my notepad went!” says Lars Gottlieb, and then he goes silent. He pushes his plastic-framed glasses up further on his nose, and he shouts. “Adeline, Adeline, darling! I have something to show you!”

2\. Karla tries to shove his head down the toilet. Hermann bites her on the arm, and she reels away, her mouth gaping wide half in astonishment, half in horror, all in pain. She wails, and Hermann can see the red of her tongue and the crookedness of her teeth. He staggers away down the stairs and goes into his mother’s study room, where she is already rising from her seat at the overflowing desk.

3\. Hermann sits at the dining room table and watches Dietrich and Karla file out of the house, with matching blue bags and white plastic lunchboxes. They hold father’s hands, and he is telling them why the sky is blue. The sun shines very brightly, and he half-closes his eyes, watching them wind their way down the garden path until the oaken front door is closed by his mother. She claps her hands, and smile. “Today, we will be learning about the mathematical constant pi, my love.”

 

 

*******

Things a person should know about Hermann Gottlieb, aged seven.

1\. He tries to rig up a working engine for the model plane he has built, and sustains burns to his hands. He does not cry when his father sighs over him, rubbing salve over the raw red pink spots of flesh. Inside his head, Hermann is already running simulations in his head, over and over again.

2\. “That is not a G.” He is in the middle of a classroom, and his eyes are fixed on the teacher. The young man with his blonde hair and woollen cardigan appears to be attempting to not grind his teeth very obviously. Bodies shift around him, and he hears giggles floating lightly in the air. The goose sits, stubborn and yellow and inexpertly drawn in crayon on a piece of paper and Hermann pokes an annoyed finger at it. “That is not a G.” Hermann’s mouth tightens and he then says, “I can recite the whole alphabet backwards for you, if you like.”

3\. The car rumbles around them, and up in front, banging on the wheel and waving his one free hand around, Lars is shouting. “No programmes in place, no support system, nothing! He is not being challenged enough, he will deteriorate, Adeline! He will become normal!” Dietrich and Karla are playing cards, and Bastien is focussed on sucking orange juice from an already depleted juicebox. Hermann reaches out, and tries to take it away from his younger brother. “There is nothing more, only air,” he says to Bastien and Bastien, he pulls away and scowls at Hermann with his red sticky mouth.

 

 

  *******  


Things a person should know about Hermann Gottlieb, aged ten.

1\. He sees his parents on weekends. Sometimes Bastien comes along on their staid trips to museums and science exhibitions. Dietrich and Karla never do. Lars and Adeline give him model kits, encyclopaedias and once, a jumbo box of Kinder Happy Hippos. “For you and your friends,” say Lars. “Something to keep them sweet!”

2\. He cannot see anything, cannot hear anything, cannot feel anything. His head is tucked into the safe dark hole created by his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, and he cannot hear the chant that vibrates around the room, he cannot feel the first tentative land of a crumpled paper ball on his head, cannot feel the mild frisson of half-fearful, half-savage delight that skitters around the room when he does not react, cannot feel the objects that rain down pitter-patter around and on him. He does not hear the teacher shouting, does not feel himself being hauled to his feet, does not see the guilty, mocking looks on his classmates’ faces. No, Hermann is writing numbers on a chalkboard somewhere, enunciating blazing brilliant new calculations to a roomful of spellbound, bespectacled, respectable men and women in a clean black and white auditorium.

3\. The librarian looks over her book at him, and she pats the empty wooden chair beside her. Hermann takes her invitation, and settles into it comfortably, and he begins to slowly work through the yellowing, dusty journals and articles he has dragged down from the oaken shelves. The sound of a commercial airplane cuts through the musty silence, and Hermann looks up for the length of the time the plane flies by, looks at its bulky grey and white shape cutting its way through the blue. That night, he draws blueprints for sleek monsters, and he tears them up before dawn.

 

 

*******

Things a person should know about Hermann Gottlieb, aged thirteen.

1\. He cannot bear to look at himself in the mirror. When he does, he looks at himself with hatred, with a dead-eyed ferocious stare. Dietrich finds him one day like this, steps quietly into the bedroom and Hermann starts, and almost falls over, and Dietrich watches him fumble and try to cover up with the blanket he drags from his bed and does not move to help. His older brother turns and leaves, as quietly as he comes, and Hermann is left alone, red mottling his sallow skin an ugly colour. That night, Hermann finds a small plastic packet of brown rolled-up sticks stuffed with a green substance and a lighter tucked carefully under his pillow. There is a note, scrawled misshapen words in red ink. _They help. Open the windows._ Hermann slips them under the loose floorboard under his bed.

2\. Everything is pain, for a very long while. Pain when he wakes, breathes, sees, walks, shits, bathes, sleeps; pain is his entire existence, it sits at its shoulder and clings to him, for once, Hermann is unable to escape in his mind. He experiences loss of control for the first time, and once, he hurls the plastic white cane out of his window. Glass shatters, and Bastien, who is playing with his friends downstairs in the garden, is cut. His little brother leaves the cane outside his bedroom and refuses to come in. It is Karla who finally brings the cane in, and helps him get to the bathroom. She sits on the floor outside the bathroom and leans against the door, and perhaps she hears the awful wheezing choked sobs of someone who doesn't want to cry. Perhaps she doesn't. Whatever she hears, the fact is that she puts Bastien in a headlock half an hour later and makes him cry.

3\. He misses a year at school, and he catches up in three months and four weeks. They (there were always such people around, everywhere, all the time, wherever he went) have more names for him, for his jerky, limping walk that marks him out as _weak_ and _prey_ , and the stronger, braver ones swoop into his personal space to jab mockingly at the new twisted patterns raised on his skin. But they forget, he has a cane now, and Hermann lashes out with uncanny speed at the darting fingers. They stop soon, after the first hand has an ugly purple bruise raised on it. Karla receives a package filled with bottles of deodorant when Hermann is in his second term at school. “Little bastard has no socialising skills,” she says to her twin in kendo class, and Dietrich laughs.


End file.
